D&D 5E New DM: Lost Mines question and Passive Perception?

[The Grassy Gnoll]

If over time you find that the PC with super high PP is giving the party an advantage such that the adventures become narrower in scope (always spotting lurking critters, always spotting traps, always spotting secret doors, whatever), then adjust.

There are three pillars and if the only way as a DM you can add challenge or surprises is via loading up on the combat pillar it becomes - for me - unbalanced. If the Exploration pillar is essentially composed of auto successes all the time, you need to amp up the Interaction and Combat side. Or you can adjust the difficulty of spotting hidden things and balance it out a bit.

It's not cheap. It's making it a challenge and fun. Always spotting traps means you'll never use them which ultimately robs the character of his special talent in the long run.

 

[Psikerlord#]

If over time you find that the PC with super high PP is giving the party an advantage such that the adventures become narrower in scope (always spotting lurking critters, always spotting traps, always spotting secret doors, whatever), then adjust.

There are three pillars and if the only way as a DM you can add challenge or surprises is via loading up on the combat pillar it becomes - for me - unbalanced. If the Exploration pillar is essentially composed of auto successes all the time, you need to amp up the Interaction and Combat side. Or you can adjust the difficulty of spotting hidden things and balance it out a bit.

It's not cheap. It's making it a challenge and fun. Always spotting traps means you'll never use them which ultimately robs the character of his special talent in the long run.

Why not just remove PP instead, and roll every time? That way you get some variation naturally. Not every trap will be spotted, etc, just due to luck

 

[iserith]

If over time you find that the PC with super high PP is giving the party an advantage such that the adventures become narrower in scope (always spotting lurking critters, always spotting traps, always spotting secret doors, whatever), then adjust.

There are three pillars and if the only way as a DM you can add challenge or surprises is via loading up on the combat pillar it becomes - for me - unbalanced. If the Exploration pillar is essentially composed of auto successes all the time, you need to amp up the Interaction and Combat side. Or you can adjust the difficulty of spotting hidden things and balance it out a bit.

It's not cheap. It's making it a challenge and fun. Always spotting traps means you'll never use them which ultimately robs the character of his special talent in the long run.

What you describe sounds like a problem with how the DM is treating passive Perception as an "always on" radar instead of a trade-off that requires reasonable specificity to be useful. You don't need to inflate the DCs to counter a player's investment in this area if you don't treat it as "always on" radar. It'll come into play only when there is uncertainty after a player describes what he or she wants to do.

 

[devincutler]

Hi All, glad I found this forum, it looks like it's going to be invaluable as a new DM. We started the Lost Mines campaign from the Starter Set a couple of nights ago and ran into some rules questions. Hoping someone will give some clarification on how they handle these situations.

1. In the goblin surprise attack, it specifically says that goblins cannot be surprised in the text. A wood elf rogue in our group managed to do just that though, and I wasn't sure how (or if I should) stop it. He goes up the embankment, makes a stealth role, and surprises the goblins on one side. Because they never beat his stealth role, the goblins on the other side never see him and he basically ends up killing 3 of the 4 with his bow. Now, it also says the terrain is thick brush which made me believe that it would be very hard to stealth through it trying to surprise someone that is basically waiting for him and watched him go up the embankment, but again, I was unsure how to play that.

I interpreted that statement as saying that the goblins won't be surprised by the PCs as a whole. In other words, they are alert for a wagon coming down the road and so the PCs as a whole cannot catch them napping. The fact that one or more PCs might break away from the noisy, expected wagon and counter surprise the goblin ambushers is perfectly acceptable IMO.

2. Next part was the traps on the trail. The text says that unless the characters say they are looking for traps, the first person in the group get trapped. The first person argued their passive perception is very high and they would have noticed the traps. My opinion was that makes a high passive perception pretty powerful since I would basically have to give everything away to the player without any role playing involved because he doesn't really have to indicate he is looking for anything, his high passive perception simply gives it to him. Thoughts?

Perception is without a doubt the most important skill in the game, and Passive Perception is probably a bit too powerful. I would, frankly, make it a DC of 5 (or 6 or 7)+your modifier rather than 10. So a person with an 18 Wis and a proficiency bonus of +2 would have a PP of 11. That would still ensure that all DC 11 or lower traps would be found, and by high levels the PP would be (assuming a 20 Wis) a 16, which will find most any trap.

As it stands, the rules say PP does not require any trade off. You could rule that one's attention still needs to be focused on the area being passively perceived, and therefore a PC traveler can emphasize his attention on the ground ahead or the surrounding area at large. His PP will suffer disadvantage (in this case a -5 penalty) on whichever of the two he does not concentrate on. This at least forces a high PP PC to consider strategy.

For example, if the high PP PCs says he is paying special attention to the ground ahead of him for traps, then he gets his full PP and will find all of those traps, but he will suffer a -5 to PP at the same time to notice goblins sneaking up on the party from behind. Now he pays a potential price for finding those traps, and if he properly guesses which mode of observations is most appropriate for the situation, then he deserves to be rewarded by finding the traps.

 

[Rabbitbait]

I've got nothing against a high passive perception. One of the players in my game really wanted a Sherlock Holmes type character so he did all he could to focus on creating a high perception. So now he always notices things that the others simply would not unless they were actively searching. It's good. It rewards his character concept (for which he made sacrifices) and means that roleplaying wise he is always the person who spots the clue, or the trap, or the hidden enemy.

Yes it makes it a bit harder for me as a DM, but its a group game. The players like that they feel like they are cheating the system just a little (even though they aren't).

 

[Blackwarder]

I roll against PP instead of using a static number:
My on the fly modifiers are:
Crudely hidden +5
Competently hidden +8
Expertly hidden +10

I'm not sure if the math is good but it's been working.

Warder

 

[Agravain]

As it stands, the rules say PP does not require any trade off. You could rule that one's attention still needs to be focused on the area being passively perceived, and therefore a PC traveler can emphasize his attention on the ground ahead or the surrounding area at large. His PP will suffer disadvantage (in this case a -5 penalty) on whichever of the two he does not concentrate on. This at least forces a high PP PC to consider strategy.

For example, if the high PP PCs says he is paying special attention to the ground ahead of him for traps, then he gets his full PP and will find all of those traps, but he will suffer a -5 to PP at the same time to notice goblins sneaking up on the party from behind. Now he pays a potential price for finding those traps, and if he properly guesses which mode of observations is most appropriate for the situation, then he deserves to be rewarded by finding the traps.

I like this approach and think I'm going to try it in our next session. I'm actually fine with giving full PP for even a goblin sneak attack, I simply would like some RP involved in the process instead of "Ok, we walk down the trail". In that case, I think I'm going to add +5 to difficulty checks. If they, for instance, said "We're going to carefully walk down this trail (so half speed), looking for anything suspicious". Then full passive perception would apply.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I've got nothing against a high passive perception. One of the players in my game really wanted a Sherlock Holmes type character so he did all he could to focus on creating a high perception. So now he always notices things that the others simply would not unless they were actively searching. It's good. It rewards his character concept (for which he made sacrifices) and means that roleplaying wise he is always the person who spots the clue, or the trap, or the hidden enemy.

Yes it makes it a bit harder for me as a DM, but its a group game. The players like that they feel like they are cheating the system just a little (even though they aren't).

This is one of the things I dislike about PP - the same pc spots/finds everything all the time. I prefer a bit more randomness than that. Other party members should spot things from time to time, and the Sherlock holmes guy should occasionally miss something.

 

[iserith]

This is one of the things I dislike about PP - the same pc spots/finds everything all the time.

That's really not true.

 

[Rabbitbait]

This is one of the things I dislike about PP - the same pc spots/finds everything all the time. I prefer a bit more randomness than that. Other party members should spot things from time to time, and the Sherlock holmes guy should occasionally miss something.

I said always, but that's not actually the case. He's not always the person at the front of the group, or in the right part of the room, or even in that scene at all.